LogFAQs > #967375334

24. Mysterium

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/181304/mysterium

Category: Cooperative
Key mechanics: Clue-giving
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 2
Game length: 40-50 minutes
First played: 2015
Experience: 8-12 plays with 3-7 players

In Mysterium, one player is a Ghost, giving clues to the other players - paranormal investigators - about the circumstances of their death. They do this over the course of seven rounds by handing out vision cards to each investigator corresponding (in order) to that investigator's suspect, location, and murder weapon. If each player manages to solve all three of these stages in the seven rounds, there is a do-or-die bonus round for the win.

Like many of the games that lean more toward the party-game focus, Mysterium has questionable "game-iness" credentials, or at least tightness of rules. The ravens that a ghost can use to clear their hand, the re-draw rules, and the rules on discussion all lean more toward "just do stuff" than toward planned rules. A limited deck of suspects and dreams also can result in some similarities game-to-game. There are even different rules between the original Polish edition of the game and the American edition, which adds some bizarre competitive betting that we've never used.

But that doesn't particularly take away from the fun of Mysterium. Perhaps my favorite game of Mysterium involved only four players - one ghost and three guessers, each playing two spirit mediums. One of the reasons I say that Mysterium is so loose is that the majority of the fun in Mysterium doesn't come from player decisions or interaction or gameplay or even the art - instead, it's really just the loosely structured player interaction that results from it. Yeah, you're not allowed to read the Ghost's face, but it's just naturally kind of fun when someone gets a dream of a bear's skin floating like a cape, and then people can't decide whether that means the murderer is someone who kills animals or if they just have a lot of hair like a bear, and it's even funnier if you trash talk the other players during this.

Mysterium can also flop. There are times when people won't talk very much, or people will be weirdly uncooperative, or the ghost will take too long. It really relies on people having the tacit agreement to have a good time. And when that happens, it sings.